Type: Individual Consultancy to Develop a Report on the Barriers to Women's Political Participation in Sri Lanka
Duty Station: Colombo, Sri Lanka
Closing Date: 06 August 2024, midnight Sri Lanka time (GMT + 5:30)
Link to the application 

The United Nations is committed to promoting gender equality and women's empowerment in Sri Lanka and has included it as a dedicated outcome in the United Nations Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework 2023-2027. As part of this agenda of the Outcome Results Group 6 on Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment, Women’s Active Political Participation and Representation at all levels is considered a critical aspect of its priority programme. 

Over the years, Sri Lanka has made significant progress in promoting gender equality and women's empowerment by achieving parity in education, high literacy rates and good health outcomes for women and the recent introduction of the National Policy on Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment. However, despite comprising 56% of registered voters in Sri Lanka, women continue to face substantial barriers to political participation, resulting in their severe underrepresentation in political leadership. As of 2024, women hold only 5.3% of seats in the national parliament, reflecting persistent systemic challenges and gender biases within the political landscape. At the national level, the representation of Tamil and Muslim women remains particularly low, with no significant presence in parliamentary seats. Furthermore, despite legal provisions for quotas at the local level, provincial councils and local administrative bodies in Sri Lanka continue to exhibit low levels of female representation.

Understanding these obstacles is crucial for formulating strategies to enhance their involvement. UN in Sri Lanka conducted a mapping exercise to map available literature on women’s political participation in Sri Lanka and is hiring a consultant to enhance this into a comprehensive literature review of the barriers to women's political participation in Sri Lanka and facilitate a stakeholder consultation to identify key priorities for action.

UNFPA Sri Lanka is recruiting a consultant to produce a detailed and comprehensive literature review that identifies, categorizes, and analyzes the barriers to women's political participation and representation in Sri Lanka. In addition, the assignment will entail organizing a multi-sectoral stakeholders’ consultation to understand different perspectives in defining the key priority actions to address low women’s participation and representation in politics and political spaces. Ultimately, the assignment will lead to the production of a research brief which will serve as a foundation for policymakers, researchers, and advocates to develop informed strategies to improve women's political engagement.

The consultant will be responsible for the following tasks:

1. Conduct a Literature Review: review existing literature, including academic studies, policy papers, and reports on women’s political participation and representation in Sri Lanka. 

2. Identification of Barriers: Identify and categorize the various barriers (socio-cultural, economic, political, legal, and institutional) that hinder women's political participation and representation and analyze how these barriers manifest at different levels (local, regional, national) and in different contexts (urban, rural).

3. Stakeholder Consultation: facilitate a stakeholder consultation to gather stakeholders’ insights, and validate and refine the literature review findings and recommendations for advocacy, policy and programme interventions. 

4. Analysis and Synthesis: prepare a report detailing the methodology, findings, conclusion and recommendations, best practices and strategies from a comparable context that could be adapted to Sri Lanka. The report should also highlight any gaps in the existing literature, interrogate the result of the consultation, and provide an operating conceptual framework for enhancing women’s political participation in Sri Lanka.

Please refer to the Terms of Reference for further details.